• The Accounts/ERP Systems people were saying it was a Network Problem.
• The LAN/WAN people were saying it was a Citrix/Remote Access problem.
• The Citrix/Remote Access people said it was a Broadband/Bandwidth problem.
• The Broadband people said it was a CCTV Remote Viewing issue.

I could go on, but the net result was the customer was left “Holding the Baby” and the problem was dragging on for weeks, causing huge disruption and making the IT Systems unusable for a large proportion of the working day.

Because the company had no In-House IT resource or an Independent IT Professional who had no vested interest to call upon, the individual suppliers were able to quote technical terms at the customer and blame everyone else.

After looking at the problem and talking to all the suppliers we were able to establish that the problem was caused by a number of issues;

• The Security company was inadvertently streaming CCTV from the customer site 24 Hours a day using large amounts of bandwidth. We were able to get them to only stream video based on event triggering.
• The LAN/WAN people had added an extra broadband connection to the VPN and the routing of traffic over the networks had not been adjusted to take advantage of the new connection.
• The Citrix and Broadband suppliers had not co-ordinated and optimised their parameters to make sure they were working to maximise the speed of the connection.
• There had been an upgrade to the ERP System that installed a module which was not required, but was using large amounts of the server processing power.

We were able to increase the overall performance of the systems by 80% in a few days and by 100% within a couple of weeks.

Because of our depth of experience, gathered over twenty five years in various industries and business sectors, we were able to get to the root cause of the issues and allow the company to concentrate on their core business and stop wasting time arguing with the various IT Suppliers.

If you find yourself in this type of situation, don’t wast time fighting with IT Suppliers. Talk to an Independent IT Professional who will ultimately save you a lot of time and money. Better still develop an ongoing relationship with a professional who knows your system and can make sure any changes don’t have a knock on affect on  your existing systems.

• During the three years I was with BT Ireland I only had one major problem and that turned out to be an eircom problem when they were upgrading the fibre link to my local exchange.
• When I was first moved to Vodafone, I could not log on to their network. It took several phone calls and several days to fully resolve.
• I have a range of Fixed IP Addresses and when they were first migrated there were major problems accessing Irish sites like Revenue Online, AIB Banking Online, AER Lingus, etc. It took about fifteen phone calls and over a week to resolve the issue.
• On one occasion they de-allocated my Fixed IP Addresses and my servers were no longer accessible from the Internet.
• On numerous occasions the connection has gone down for several hours without explanation and because they have denied there was a problem, I have had to spend hours double checking my configurations only to discover that it was a Vodafone problem after all.
• Since moving to Vodafone my Upload and Download Speeds have been reduced by approx 30%.
• The Vodafone connection cannot sustain a Skype call even during the morning when there is no congestion on the network.

Now before anybody comes back to me and says it might be my phone line, let me point out the following;

• This all worked fine when I was with BT.
• I am approx 100m from the exchange (Attenuation Down 13db, Attenuation Up 7db)
• For legacy reasons I have another DSL connection with another provider to the same exchange, which works fine and has done during all these Vodafone problems.

I do have to say that throughout these problems I have found the Vodafone Staff to be very helpful, but having nice people working for you does not make up for a network that is simply not up to the job.

]]> http://blog.glasgorman.com/2010/07/vodafone-ireland-do-not-provide-a-business-class-dsl-fixed-line-broadband-service/feed/ 0 http://blog.glasgorman.com/2010/05/can-your-business-survive-without-the-internet/ http://blog.glasgorman.com/2010/05/can-your-business-survive-without-the-internet/#comments Wed, 05 May 2010 21:40:23 +0000 admin http://blog.glasgorman.com/?p=425 [...]]]> I know, ALL businesses need the Internet, but it was really brought home to me in the last two days just how reliant we are on the Internet when two of my customers got caught up in the BT toVodafone migration and lost connectivity to most major Irish business sites. (I’ll talk about Vodafones Fixed Line Broadband in another post).

The first business is a Car Dealer and when their Internet connection was down they could not;

• Register new cars through Revenue Online
• Use Banking Online
• Order spare parts
• Download Car Diagnostic Software
• Register Used Cars with Carzone.ie

These were just the issues that were pointed out to me. I’m sure they access otuer systems on the Internet.

The second business markets, maintains, rents and handles bookings in the Holiday and Leisure sector. When their Internet connection was down, they could not;

• Use Baking Online
• Manage Bookings via Online Booking System
• Upload/Register/Manage Property listings
• Manage their website via their content management system

In the case of both busiesses they were unable to operate without their Internet connections and in both cases they did not have a backup Internet connection.

If your business relies on the Internet to function, then you should have an alternative means of connecting to the Internet. Due to the nature of our business we have three seperate Internet connections;

• Fixed Line (ADSL) Broadband
• Fixed Wireless
• Mobile Broadband (Pay as you go broadband)

We can also access the Internet on our Android mobile phones.

So if you want to make sure that your business can continue to function, then contact your local Computer Services Provider for a simple, cost effective solution.

Well you can very easily get remote access to your computer systems and indeed communicate with your work colleagues.

The only thing you require is a Broadband Internet Connection. To access your computer systems you can either;

• Access your existing computer systems using a secure remote connection such as GoToMyPC. This is a hosted implementation of Citrix, which is a well established system used by many larger businesses to access their systems remotely and can cost as little as €12 per month.
• The second option is to consider using Software As A Service (SAAS)  for your main systems. SAAS means that your Integrated Accounts System / CRM systems are not installed on a computer in your office but are installed on a secure server in a Data Centre, which you access remotely using a secure connection. Examples in Ireland are Mamut and Eircom SAAS.

To keep in contact with your work colleagues all you require is Skype and you can talk, and if you have a webcam, have video calls for free.

So if you want to make sure that the next period of  bad weather doesn’t bring you business to a halt why not contact me in Glasgorman Computer Services HERE.

P.S. There is also a very strong argument that a small business can dramatically reduce it’s recurring infrastructure costs, regardless of weather etc. , by using technology to implement Remote Working for employees.